Alice Cooper Loses Business Venture Following His Anti-Trans Comments
Cooper's deal with a cosmetics brand goes south.
In the wake of his comments about transgender people, rock singer Alice Cooper has lost a sponsorship deal with a cosmetics company. It is common knowledge that the 75-year-old, also known by his given name, Vincent Damon Furnier, is best known for his signature black eye makeup, flamboyant costumes, and horror-themed props such as fake blood and guillotines. There was a plan for him to collaborate with Vampyre Cosmetics on a makeup collection named after him, but the company dropped him due to comments he made in an interview with the music website Stereogum, which led to a fallout between the two parties.
"In light of recent statements by Alice Cooper we will no longer be doing a makeup collaboration. We stand with all members of the LGBTQIA+ community and believe everyone should have access to healthcare. All pre-order sales will be refunded," Vampyre Cosmetics posted on its official Instagram page. As part of the interview, per Rolling Stone, Cooper was asked to elaborate on his thoughts regarding gender and sexuality in light of the fact that he had made some fairly progressive statements about bisexuality and pansexuality in 1974. "I'm understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I'm afraid that it's also a fad, and I'm afraid there's a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that," he said. "I find it wrong when you've got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you're confusing him telling him, 'Yeah, you're a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.'"
Cooper expressed concern about unidentified factors exerting pressure on kids or adolescents, adding, "You're still trying to find your identity, and yet here's this going on, saying, 'Yeah, but you can be anything you want. You can be a cat if you want to be." He added later: "So I say let somebody at least become sexually aware of who they are before they start thinking about if they're a boy or a girl. A lot of times, I look at it this way, the logical way: If you have these genitals, you're a boy. If you have those genitals, you're a girl. There's a difference between 'I am a male who is a female, or I'm a female that's a male' and wanting to be a female. You were born a male. OK, so that's a fact. You have these things here. Now, the difference is you want to be a female. OK, that's something you can do later on if you want to. But you're not a male born a female." "I find it wrong when you've got a 6-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you're confusing him telling him, 'Yeah, you're a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be,'" he said in the interview. "I mean, if you identify as a tree ... I'm going, 'Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?' It's so absurd, that it's gone now to the point of absurdity."
After Cooper's comments regarding trans kids and their parents, the interviewer pushed back on Cooper's statements, arguing that parents were trying to listen to their children and find doctors who would be able to provide them with appropriate care, not encouraging doubt in them. Unfortunately, Cooper's response about bathrooms was one of the classic talking points. "Well, I can see somebody really taking advantage of this, though," he said. "A guy can walk into a woman's bathroom at any time and just say, 'I just feel like I'm a woman today' and have the time of his life in there, and he's not in the least bit… He's just taking advantage of that situation. Well, that's going to happen. Somebody's going to get raped, and the guy's going to say, 'Well, I felt like a girl that day, and then I felt like a guy.' Where do you draw this line?"
While these myths about 'bathroom predators' have been comprehensively debunked, an increasing number of anti-trans bathroom laws are coming into effect, said to put transgender people at more risk of harm. The "School's Out" singer hasn't been the only rocker sharing anti-trans sentiments recently. It was reported in May that Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley called gender-affirming care a "sad and dangerous fad," making similar statements to Cooper's about children "playing" with gender instead of understanding their own identities. In response to Stanley's comments, Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider said, "there was a time where I 'felt pretty' too. Glad my parents didn't jump to any rash conclusions." Since then, both artists have retracted their comments.